From the large number of news (even considered most are biased one way or another) articles about JAV (and US porn) performers, sex workers, hostesses etc I read over the years, I think your understanding of JAV and Japanese norms and outlook is a bit off.
Firstly, the singles rate (not in a steady partnership) in Japan is very high. Esp. a woman with an independent (and strong) source of income is likely to be single. Therefore I can guess right away many JAV performers are un-committed, even without considering she's working in the sex industry.
By most accounts (knowing it might be biased), most JAV performers leave the industry and enter mainstream society as if they've never been in the "business".
The participation rate in JAV and/or hostess (a board category that cover prostitution) is extremely high. According to a survey (which you are free to question) 1 in 4 Japanese women have such work experience.
http://www.tokyokinky.com/1-in-4-quarter-japanese-girls-women-work-hostess/
Now of course JAV is a bit more hardcore than hostessing, with hostessing you get typically one customer at a time, with JAV, for one day of work you are exposed to thousands of paying customers and unknown number of BT/DD leechers. But still if 1-in-4 women have some sex work experience than 1-in-100 women have JAV experience is not as outrageous as it sounds, for the rest of the world.
Consider the circumstantial evidence:
Everyday many JAV's are released (judge from Akiba-Online, DMM etc), how many, I'm too lazy to count now, but more than 10, I'd say? And I'd say more than half are "amateur" JAV's (which I define as when a JAV's cover image doesn't list the performer's name, no matter how many times that woman have appeared credited or uncredited in other JAVs). So literally thousands of JAVs are released each year, and half of them are amateur. Multiply by the 35+ years of JAV history, then the 1-in-100 estimate is not so unimaginable at all. Although this level of participation is absolutely mad for most other places in the world.
Now with tens-of-thousands of (former) JAV performers walking around in the country, how many cases of drug overdose. imprisonment, murders and suicides have you heard of associated with JAV? For me, ZERO. Whereas similar cases involving former porn actresses, strippers and even Playboy Playamates are known and not even too uncommon. OK granted Japanese news media may have a habit of under-reporting negative news, but at least some newspapers are socially conservative and they are politically biased to point accusations at the sex industry. Yet we hear of so few such cases, especially compared to the (very verifiable) common cases of current and former JAV performers crossing over to mainstream media (albeit mostly as minor celebrity).
I'm not a fan of amateur JAV (as I prefer "professionalism" over "realism") but those I have seen, I mean... The typical amateur JAV girl is so average, so unremarkable, that (1) mostly she can't star a single JAV all by herself and have to share the limited production budget with other performers (2) she can't make it into big budget productions, (3) hard to see she get casting calls over and over again so her career is limited. Without the millions or tens of millions of yens lifetime income of a long career, the stigma of a former sex worker must be low.
Some of them are just plain ugly, actually. If you must demand proof I will have to grab some frames from some uncensored JAV I have. They are so ugly that you have to conclude either (1) they got into drug addiction or debt problems or something equally bad and "fallen" into JAV and presumably on the path to total destruction or (2) that amateur JAV is considered so nonchalant by mainstream society that social stigma of being a former JAV performer is so low that its worth the little pay of a one-off job (I'm guessing 10,000-20,000 yens). I think (2) is the case.
So... IMHO, past history as JAV performer is not a major burden/skeleton-in-closet.
